The Paradox of Freedom and Control

Networked Media Week 4

This week is all about New Media and Social Media, and the best way that has been described to me is the imagery of a plant in a jar of water. The other tutor for the course, Elaine, described New Media being the jar, and the roots as social media, a growing organism contained within New Media. As the jar grows bigger, so will the roots, thus suggesting that as New Media expands and evolves, naturally so will social media. So, after a week of studying the nature of affordances and constraints in the design of everyday objects and tools, specifically applying these thought processes to our understanding of New Media has raised many questions that I have about the dichotomy of freedom and control for online users.

So, backtracking a little… have a look at another amazing post I found on r/crappydesigns:

Maintenance put new locks and handles on the gates for security from CrappyDesign

The video shows a security door that is locked by a pin code to prevent unauthorized clientele from accessing the ground (a constraint). However, the person recording the video has clearly identified an affordance of the flawed design, that allows them to manipulate the inside handle from the outside, allowing them, or anyone else, the ability to access the restricted area. Alluding back to a reading from last week, the idea of “perceived affordances vs. real affordances” has been argued that a skilled designer will be able to take in all the affordances of a design and use it effectively, rather than just looking at the object with only the affordances it was expected to accomplish. However, besides just wanting a designer to embrace all the designs’ affordances, when looking at New Media, I believe that it is essential for designers, programmers, and engineers to understand all the real affordances of their design for a means of safety.

Looking at the 2016 release of information about Gmail users, they had calculated that there were more than 1 billion users, clearly a popular email platform because of it’s free accessibility and easy navigations that make it easy people to use. However according to Trend Micro, terrorists had also gravitated towards this platform, and it had been estimated that 34% of these 1 billion users were in fact jihadists. Fortunately, the FBI have been able to track down these users by navigating their IP address. But, this doesn’t just stop at Gmail. Other smaller emailing platforms such as Mail2Tor and SIGAINT are also being used by jihadists as means for communication, however these platforms make it a lot more difficult for law enforcement to track down their IP addresses. The platforms work with a system that encrypts and bounces signals across the globe, thus throwing law enforcement off their scent. In particular, according to a study by Trend Micro, Telegram became a very popular chatting service for jihadists because of its encrypted and anonymous affordances. This service was created by a Russian Tech Entrepreneur who was an advocate for privacy and freedom online, but then that raises the question of what are the costs when there’s too much freedom in the world of New Media?

In the reading by Sam Hinton and Larissa Hjorth, “Understanding Social Media”, they address Wendy Chun’s understanding of the dichotomy of control and freedom as a paradox. They state that “if you want freedom, then you have to submit to control”, which is a battling opinion that I’m sure many online users have conflicting thoughts about. The world of New Media promises so many possibilities for users, like how the very concept of cyberspace is timeless and infinite. So why the hell should we be put under constraints that limit us from exploring this infinite universe? I’m sure that these were the very thoughts of the creator of Telegram, and of course, he did not intend for their platform to be used by terrorists, but unfortunately… they did. And so, control had to be implemented despite the platform’s promise for privacy and freedom.

Thus, this paradox of freedom and control hangs over our heads, with an infinite world of incredible possibilities at our fingertips, but also dangers that lurk just as close.